Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Contemporary Liberalism and the Resurrection of the Blood Feud

Eight circles down, one to go. To review, the eighth circle has ten departments that cater to different sins, but one of the sins discussed in Canto XXIX strikes me as a little idiosyncratic to warrant such a heavy punishment: "counterfeiters posing as alchemists."

We'll deal with them in tomorrow's post. But first we need to move past the "sowers of schism," one of whom is a relative of Dante. In life, this fellow was a participant in, and ultimately victim of, a mindless blood feud. Virgil councils Dante to move along and not waste time indulging in pity for this paisano.

If only we could follow Virgil's advice and offer no slack to the worshipers of blood! In the margin I have a little note to myself: Japan-Germany-Islam, but those are only recent maninfestations of a soul-pathology that is planted deep into the heart of man.

This is something Dennis Prager often discusses, i.e., the distinction between those whose values are based upon truth and goodness, vs. those whose values are rooted in blood.

In this regard, we cannot actually consider, say, Nazi Germany, to be an aberration, because it was animated by the ancient mind parasites of blood and soil, which seem to co-arise with man's self-consciousness -- indeed, they seem to be the poisonous fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, upon which the blood-worshipers cannot stop gorging themselves. Truly, it is the satanic eucharist.

We have by no means conquered these mind parasites. The attempt to do so begins with the ancient Israelights, moves on through Christianity, and then has its fullest political expression in the United States, which was explicitly founded upon ideas and values, not blood or soil. Anyone can be an American, so long as they adopt certain values.

At least this used to be the case. For the past century, the atavistic left has been engaging in a rear-guard action designed to drag America back down into the violence, bigotry, and parochialism of blood and kin.

Today they call this diabolical doctrine "multiculturalism," and we are now suffering the consequences of having a president -- provincial and incurious fellow that he is -- whose "post"-modern education succeeded in making him believe that his primitive prejudices are not only normative, but superior to what comes developmentally later.

The proglodyte left was able to accomplish this assault on America by hijacking the civil rights movement and using it as a vehicle not to transcend blood, but to bathe in it. Which is why the left is so obsessed with race.

But it's actually the other way around: those who value blood over ideas have no other respectable vehicle of expression than the modern left. Their values dominate academia (e.g., "black studies," "critical race theory," "Chicano studies," "queer theory" [since they believe homosexuality is in the blood, i.e., genetic]), the MSM, and politics (recall that Clinton wanted a cabinet that "looks like America," not one that thinks like America).

The more Americans are compelled by the state to think in terms of racial categories, the less we are able to think in abstract categories of truth, decency, justice -- or, as Dennis Prager says, the American triumvirate of liberty / e pluribus unum / in God we trust.

And not just any God, of course, but the universal God of Judeo-Christendom. It completely defeats the purpose of America to give one's primary allegiance to some tribal moon god, or to a manmade religion masquerading as science.

In fact, each leg of the American trinity is implicitly related to the others. For example, the Judeo-Christian God is the God of liberty. Other so-called gods are not, most notably, the god of Islam, who is a god of surrender and obedience.

And the doctrine of e pluribus unum -- from many, one -- directly contradicts the doctrine of multiculturalism, which teaches: from one, many. In such an upside-down world, truth must be a secondary concern, which makes it no concern at all. It is much more important for the left to have a "Latina" or female on the Supreme Court than a gifted and impartial jurist who will preserve and protect the political Truth embedded in the Constitution.

But this is a shrill smokescream anyway, because we all understand that the left's hysteria about race and gender is just the rationale for a raw power play. Their "racial pride" does not extend to Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas or Walter Williams or Shelby Steele.

This also explains the implicit alliance between Islamists and the international left, because they share the common value of blood. They love the Palestinians, because they are engaged in an endless blood feud against the very people most responsible for delegitimizing blood feuds. No wonder Jews are the most picked on people in history!

Don Colacho: Unless circumstances constrain him, there is no radically leftist Jew. The people that discovered divine absolutism does not make deals with the absolutism of man.

Americans value liberty. The left values equality. What's the difference? "Liberty is the right to be different; equality is a ban on being different" (Don Colacho). The left says: If you're black, then start thinking like one, n#@%*r! Why more blacks aren't offended by the contempt with which they are treated by white liberal elites is a bit puzzling. Identification with the aggressor?

According to Upton, "The principle of the blood feud divides the love of Justice... from its impersonal roots in the metaphysical order. It renders the virtue of Justice interested and personalistic, and thereby perverts it for evil ends" (emphasis mine).

Oh my yes. One way the left does this is by replacing Justice with "social justice," which, because it means nothing, means everything, and vice versa. The left can justify any power grab based upon the pseudo-ideal of "social justice."

Upton makes a more subtle point, that the person who descends into the swamp of blood and race cannot help dividing his own mind against itself, which requires psychological projection in order to maintain a fraudulent sense of psychic wholeness.

Thus, for the left, every "good negro" such as Al Sharpton, must evoke projections into a "bad negro" such as Clarence Thomas. Likewise, the Palestinians cannot love their own children without hating Jewish children. It is a total degradation of the human condition. Me, I couldn't care less if Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson are "black." Much more importantly, they are sinister idiots.

No, knucklehead, it's the opposite of the Berlin Wall. It's not designed to keep good people in, but bad people out.

34 comments:

Many people self-identifying as "conservative" are simply inverse leftists -- authoritarians under the skin. How many times have I heard from people on conservative sites who would constrain my economic freedom in numerous ways (primarily by constraining me from trading with whomever I like, provided they are not literally an enemy of America). How many times have we seen the virulent old-fashioned racism rear itself among "conservatives"? Last week lucianne.com had a thread about how there is almost no looting in Japan. They even had to post a warning to "mind your manners". That was ignored as at least 50% of the posters plunged into a no-holds barred vicious attack on American blacks ("of course they had no looting, they don't have any you-know-what over there" etc etc). I have a major problem with this. Whatever these people are, they are not like the kind of people on this site at all. Hence my wish that we could get the term "liberal" back from the authoritarian/racist left so as to distinguish ourselves from the authoritarian/racist right.

Late to yesterday's party: I find it useful to always remember that Islam is a Christian heresy that took on a political and cultural life of its own. So, no need to go sifting through it looking for the good- it will be good that we already possess, and much more wholly. Which leaves the practical issues, like: are you planning to kill/enslave us?It's a good antidote to PC, and avoids all the moon-god hoo-hah.

I seriously doubt that the lucianne commenters were talking about race but about culture. Everyone knows that blacks commit a vastly disproportionate amount of crime, but I know of no one who believes it is a because of race, but values (these people exist, but they are inconsequential). It is the left that has forced us to conflate race and culture, so that if one criticizes a culture, one is a racist.

Many of them perhaps were talking about culture. Nonetheless there is obvious racism going on many of those sites on a regular basis. One remark in particular struck me: "their women are hideous". That sort of thing is the very essence of racist thinking.

In any case I certainly don't intend to imply that the people who run lucianne,com (or any other site) are themselves racists -- far from it. Only that many people frequent those sites who to me anyway do not represent what I consider to be classical liberal or conservative values.

"But this is a shrill smokescream anyway, because we all understand that the left's hysteria about race and gender is just the rationale for a raw power play. Their "racial pride" does not extend to Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas or Walter Williams or Shelby Steele."

Yep, the left is anti-conceptual, it is entirely dependent upon imposing Power over Truth. It will always retreat from principles into particulars because that is the way to change the footing of a conversation from Truth, to Power. It masks it's intent as 'getting real' or 'dealing with the actual issues that are important to Americans when sitting at their table', but what it actually means is discarding any Qualitative question of Right and Wrong, in order to discuss Quantitative issues, because the moment you stop discussing whether or not, say, the Income Tax is Right or Wrong, and begin discussing whether a 'reasonable' upper percentage would be 60% or 30%, you've conceded their position and thrown out the only thing can could save you - the principle involved.

To retain the advantage of the moral high ground... it requires that you stay on the high ground!

If our side would just stop getting hypnotized by the lure of being seen as being 'reasonable', and start using Right Reason, the full support of Vertical Truth would be available to us... but nooo... we always want to seem bigger in worldly eyes... and we get sucked down into it, falling 32 ft per sec, per sec.

"Upton makes a more subtle point, that the person who descends into the swamp of blood and race cannot help dividing his own mind against itself, which requires psychological projection in order to maintain a fraudulent sense of psychic wholeness."

Hmmm... creating and associating yourself with a faux hierarchy, one horizontally based upon numeric power, rather than verticality.

I wonder if the fact that the vertical 'One in the many' enables the various quantities to be contained, their differences made meaningless, is what is felt as a threat? Why else would the otherwise warring quantities band together (for instance islambies & gay rights wackivists), except that they see the fact of the others basis in quantitative power, as validating their own embrace of power along with a mutual rejection of that higher perspective which ever threatens to render their quantities meaningless and powerless?

You have somethng there. The teuton/saxon has had his merry way with the world and its peoples over the last millenium. A lusty and vigouous people launched from the germanic forest clearings, leaping to the british isles and thence to wide america before fetching up agains the bamboo barrier of the feisty asiatics, they've managed to civilize to some extent almost all peoples but there is a deep and brooding resentment there too.

I think this smouldering anger drives alot of cultural and political movements worldwide, including islamism, leftism and militant feminism.

The saxon way is a manly, hetero, family centered and vigorous life-force and has greatly improved the world, but it has undeniably done violence and this now must be paid for.

Will - indeed; also, all things considered I don't think I qualify as doglike. The dogs I know are generally much more virtuous than I am.

To the post, re. the counterfeiters posing as alchemists, I think they might have earned their place. In today's terms, they're the sellers of homeopathic water and other useless treatments taken by the gullible to heal their ills, often at the expense of medicines and procedures that could genuinely help. Think of the cancer victim who goes to one of those phony faith healers who "non-surgically" removes a "tumor" (with a convincing bit of theatrics and slight-of-hand) or drinks water "infused" with some essence that supposedly will shrink the tumor. From a spiritual perspective, they lead the faithful away from true healing, true whole-iness. Anybody who's lost a loved-one to that sort of fraud would no doubt feel the false-alchemist completely deserved his fate, I suspect.

Re. The resurgence of blood - or in a sense, tribalism - over the American way, Taranto yesterday noted the sinister "suggestion" by the police and fire department unions that a business support their political cause or suffer consequences. The union tribes, in brotherly solidarity, would seem to be less concerned with defending the Constitution than with defending the honor and interests of their brethren. Justice quite literally becomes personalistic when those who are charged with maintaining the rule of law selectively choose to enforce it. Additionally, on that note our laws have become so convoluted in recent days that the defenders of justice cannot help but selectively enforce it. If I didn't know better, I'd think that was by design...

Truly, there is no escape from the poison. Even going to a Catholic school, I see that Tristan brought home a little miniature Time magazine for kids. The cover has a picture of Obama, and says "Learn about African-American leaders, artists, scientists and athletes."

Why? Why not GREAT artists, or COURAGEOUS leaders, or BRILLIANT scientists? Why does the adjective "African American" have any significance whatsoever, especially to a 6 year-old?

Tristan's best friend is black, and so far he doesn't even know it. Why is it so important for the left that a 6 year-old be aware of race?

They don't waste any time, do they? It's maddening. Of all the characteristics about a person, one of the ones that ought to be the least interesting is their racial background. And in discussing accomplishments, the next least interesting ought to be gender.

'Least interesting'?... hmm... well...maybe depending upon a particular point of view involved, but I suspect that regarding the female gender, that may not hold true for some; males between 11 & 99, for instance.

Well yes, context matters! I guess what I meant is that I tend to be just as put off by giving anyone special credit for lacking a Y chromosome as I am by giving anyone special credit for having a particular skin color.

I am not even remotely interested in conflating male and female, I'm just tired of all the militant feminist BS.

"We have by no means conquered these mind parasites. The attempt to do so begins with the ancient Israelights, moves on through Christianity, and then has its fullest political expression in the United States, which was explicitly founded upon ideas and values, not blood or soil. Anyone can be an American, so long as they adopt certain values."

'One in the many' enables the various quantities to be contained, their differences made meaningless, is what is felt as a threat? Why else would the otherwise warring quantities band together (for instance islambies & gay rights wackivists), except that they see the fact of the others basis in quantitative power, as validating their own embrace of power along with a mutual rejection of that higher perspective which ever threatens to render their quantities meaningless and powerless?"

"We have by no means conquered these mind parasites. The attempt to do so begins with the ancient Israelights, moves on through Christianity, and then has its fullest political expression in the United States, which was explicitly founded upon ideas and values, not blood or soil."

...reminds of this from the Philokalia:

St Neilos the Ascetic,

"Many Greeks and not a few Jews attempted to philosophize; but only the disciples of Christ have pursued true wisdom, because they alone have Wisdom as their teacher.."

Quote "Upton makes a more subtle point, that the person who descends into the swamp of blood and race cannot help dividing his own mind against itself, which requires psychological projection in order to maintain a fraudulent sense of psychic wholeness."

Why are the only alternatives either race/blood are completely irrelevant, and race/blood are God? Is all the ground in between a swamp?

Another point might be that evils are always perversions of a natural good. In this case, ethnic super-identity (or mobsterism based on race) is in fact a twisted version of something that could be good, and isn't. I realize this is Platonism...but a case could be made that this is a Christian view properly as well.

What About Bob?

Who spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Who is your nonlocal partner in disorganized crimethink? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!